The Middle Classes
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the impact of the shifting geo political and economic trends on the British class system with specialist guests. Muriel Zagha is a writer and critic and Author of Finding Monsieur Right and co-host of the podcast Garlic and Pearls. Lisa Holdsworth is a Leeds based TV script writer who has worked on amongst others Emmerdale, Midsomer Murders, Robin Hood, New Tricks and Waterloo Road. Her latest series Dreamers premiers on Channel 4 this weekend. Professor Sam Friedman is a sociologist of class and inequality. His latest book with Aaron Reeves is Born To Rule exploring how the British elite has changed over the last 120 years. Lord Willetts is the President of the Resolution Foundation’s Advisory Council and of the Intergenerational Commission and Chair of the UK Space Agency. He is a visiting Professor at King’s College London and Chair of the Foundation for Science and Technology. Earlier this month he was appointed as Chair of the Regulatory Innovation Office. Professor Melinda Mills is a demographer based at Nuffield College, University of Oxford, who will talk about new research which suggests that socio-economic status ia social construct with heritable component and genetic consequences.
Producer: Lisa Jenkinson
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Can I just say? |
| 0:01.5 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast. |
| 0:04.0 | It's such a wonderful listen. |
| 0:05.6 | So nice. |
| 0:06.5 | There are loads more like it on BBC sounds. |
| 0:08.8 | Different paces, different heights. |
| 0:10.6 | The roof is buckling. |
| 0:11.9 | Where you can also listen to live sports commentary. |
| 0:14.2 | It's right foot goes for goal. |
| 0:16.7 | And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories. |
| 0:21.6 | The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession. |
| 0:25.2 | And she's had to live with that. |
| 0:26.8 | So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion. |
| 0:29.7 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.8 | Sort of expecting that every week now. |
| 0:34.7 | Thank you, Al. |
| 0:35.8 | Way back in 2008, when I was young and unfingermarked and full of hope, |
| 0:41.4 | I presented an addition of this programme that dealt with the subject of class. We were discussing |
| 0:46.9 | a documentary made by the late John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister and Son of Hull. One of the studio |
| 0:53.8 | guests made a disobliging remark about |
| 0:56.4 | that city and then asked, does this programme get broadcast in Hull? It's considered bad form to |
| 1:02.8 | flick the Vs on the radio, so I kept smiling. But this week, in the aftermath of the Chancellor's |
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